Web Summit 2022: Data Science, MKT and Low-Code

The Metaverse, NFTs, Web3, Marketing, Social Networks, and Data Decentralization were among the most debated topics at Web Summit 2022. More than a thousand speakers addressed these and other subjects on the 17 stages of the largest technology conference in Europe, which took place in Lisbon between the 1st and 4th of November.

Amid a scenario full of uncertainties and risks, the event brought more than 71,000 people (42% women) together to discuss the role of technology in the future of society. In times of the pandemic, wars, and political, economic, and environmental crises around the world, experts and global leaders shared trends and pointed out paths for 2023.

Opening Night

During the opening ceremony, Paddy Cosgrave, CEO and Founder of the Web Summit, highlighted in his speech that this year’s edition was the largest ever. In addition, he highlighted the significant increase in the number of Brazilian and Ukrainian startups at the conference.

Among the speakers at the opening ceremony were the Minister of Economy of Portugal, António Costa Silva, the Mayor of Lisbon, Carlos Moedas, Apple’s VP of Environmental Initiatives, Lisa Jackson, and Binance Co-founder & CEO, Changpeng Zhao. Even with so many distinguished presences from the world of business and public administration, the highlight of the night was the surprise participation of Olena Zelenska, First Lady of Ukraine.

In her speech, Olena shared reports of the war that the country is experiencing, which started in February this year, and appealed to the audience for technology not to be used in the service of terrorism. “Your innovations move the world and, more than that, you have the power to determine the direction in which this world moves”, she said, on the central stage of the Altice Arena.

Data Accessible to All

On the first day of lectures at Web Summit, François-Xavier Pierrel highlighted in the “D is for Data” panel that it is time to decentralize and democratize data. However, JCDecaux’s Group Chief Data Officer explained that this does not mean that we will have the answers to all questions. “For the last two years, we couldn’t predict what was going to happen, and it had a huge impact on our lives. The question is: how will we react to these unpredictable scenarios?”.

For Pierrel, the answer is through data division. “What we’ve built through data analysis is the ability to respond to any scenario as quickly as possible, to make sure we can overcome any crisis and keep the business running. The unpredictable can be extremely negative, but also surprisingly positive. This will depend on our ability to find answers and opportunities”.

Collect, activate, structure, transform, leverage, and explore are key steps in a data-driven strategy. After reaching this cycle, JCDecaux set a new goal: to implement the D Strategy – Decentralize, Democratize, Demultiply. This strategy has three main objectives: 1) expand the data community within the organization; 2) expand access to data to as many people as possible, and 3) enhance the ability to drive innovation.

According to Pierrel, data is a fantastic lever to achieve any business objective. “I’m not suggesting that people become Data Analysts, but I think it’s important that all levels of the organization realize the value of data. This can be put into practice through a click, learn, export, and get back to work. There is no need to dive deep into data because what we really want is for them to support people’s decision-making in their areas of expertise”, he concluded.

Turn Uncertainties into Opportunities

The Fintech market — considered a global phenomenon — has become a saturated and highly competitive environment. With an economic recession on the way, the MoneyConf stage gathered a significant audience in the 2022 edition of Web Summit. To discuss the future of the sector, experts shared analyzes and forecasts in the “Fintech 2023: what next?” panel.

According to Tegan Kline, Co-founder of Edge & Node, Fintechs experienced a huge boom due to the inability of large banks to take advantage of technology. “Traditional banks do not serve individual users, as they are concentrated in customer volumes and corporate accounts. That’s why platforms like PayPal, which basically charge no transaction fees, are successful”.

Tegan pointed out that it is difficult to predict how the market will react, but guarantees that there are many opportunities in the crisis. “Businesses are emerging and there are areas that we are not paying much attention to yet: NFTs and Cryptocurrencies, for example, a branch where many people invest millions of dollars”.

According to Carolyn Rodz, Founder of Hello Alice, we all want freedom of choice, as well as knowing how banks operate and share our information. “Right now, the market is terrible, and we’re likely to be impacted one way or another. We represent a very small slice of the financial market (2%), but there are opportunities emerging, and we need to be attentive while the economy recovers”.

Carolyn highlighted that the market will react and that the key to this is understanding how Fintechs can work together with banks and governments, as they have a lot of power and influence. Tegan agrees that systems need to be decentralized. “I believe in the potential of the metaverse and the blockchain. What Google does for the decentralization of the web, The Graph does for Web3. Decentralized networks guarantee open data, always available and easily accessible”.

Brazil In Focus

Even with the forecast of a challenging economic scenario for the next year, Brazil was represented at the event in prominent stands, and by thousands of entrepreneurs and hundreds of startups. In the panel “Brazil in focus: why is the startup ecosystem booming?” Felipe Matos, President of the Brazilian Association of Startups (Abstartups) said he believes there are many reasons why the Brazilian ecosystem is growing so much.

For Matos, the pandemic boosted this growth. “We had an increase in digital demand at a time when the macroeconomic scenario in our country was favorable. With that, we managed to attract a lot of investments during the last two years. In 2021, Brazil raised 9.8 billion dollars in Venture Capital investments, and now we already have 16 unicorns, and in 2018 this number was basically zero”.  

Mariana Vasconcelos is the Founder & CEO of Agrosmart, and when she started as an entrepreneur, there was practically no ecosystem. “I come from the countryside and in Brazil there is a lot of business concentration in São Paulo, which makes access to institutions like Abstartups, for example, difficult. So we went through a different step-by-step process starting at the local university, which connected us with a startup accelerator, which then introduced us to investors. When we started, there was little capital available, angel investors and the legal framework for startups was not regulated yet”.

Brazil represents a giant market. We are 214 million people, and there are many bureaucratic and tax-related challenges. According to Mariana, in the future, our country will be a power in the provision of ecosystem services. “Brazil is a huge agricultural producer and exporter. I believe we have an opportunity to increase our market value through the intersection of agriculture and technology. This will allow us to create business models to finance a transition that will result in the export of more environmental services.”

The Future of Marketing

On the second day of lectures at Web Summit, one of the main featured panels was Marketing in 2023, with Sir Martin Sorrell, Founder of S4 Capital, and Julia Goldin, Global Chief Product & Marketing Officer of Lego. The experts spoke about trends for the future and discussed the economic recession and the political crisis.

According to Sorrell, 2023 will be a very difficult year. “The next ten years will be very different from today’s reality, due to new technologies and the fragmentation of the world. I believe that the North and South American markets will be more relevant. We have more than ever to be strategic when making bets on how to invest and where to expand geographically.”   

Julia pointed out that for the Lego Group, diversification into multiple markets is important, mainly to achieve the purpose of impacting the largest possible number of children around the world. “We opened a new factory in Vietnam, aiming to have more representation and visibility. The Asian market is certainly expanding”.

Julia also highlighted that in times of economic uncertainty, it is normal for companies and consumers to be afraid. “Thinking about business, this means that we need to pay even more attention to the experience we deliver along with products and services. We are very focused on creating the best products, taking into account important points such as passion and desire to buy, delivering an incredible holistic experience”.

The evolution of the digital environment and the metaverse are also opportunities to expand markets, as they facilitate the segmentation of audiences, which is excellent for marketing. “These spaces will be enabled with new technologies that will be more immersive and advanced. This will create opportunities for people to engage across different devices and connect with millions of people at the same time”, Julia concluded.

The Future of Software

Another talk that gathered many participants at the Web Summit was “Software may be eating the world, but low-code could eat software”. According to John Brisco, Co-founder & CEO of Coherent, software companies have begun to break ties with traditional organizations: “What we have seen in the last ten years is the creation of companies like Netflix, Airbnb, and Uber, which use software to promote a disruption in business models”, he explained.

However, as time went by and with the emergence of low-code and no-code, the software also began to experience a disruptive process. For Christine Spang, Co-founder & CTO of Nylas, in the last decade many people started to have interactions with software, mainly when creating businesses. This resulted in a high shortage of professionals. “We don’t have enough people to create that much code anymore. Low-code requires little knowledge of programming languages and, therefore, has become a solution for those who need to develop”.

According to experts, in the future, we will all be developers. “The reality is that there are not that many programmers in the world. Therefore, we need alternatives that can help in the more efficient use of these professionals. Low-code will be present in 65% of new applications by 2024. This will happen because it is easier, simpler, and more efficient”, emphasizes Brisco. 

Programming remains one of the most promising careers in the modern world. However, for Brisco, in the universe of startups, it is not just programmers who develop businesses. “The successful professionals of the future will be those who manage to translate traditional programming languages, while learning new technologies such as low-code and no-code, for example. Teams will be increasingly collaborative. If you transit between these two worlds, you will certainly have a guaranteed job”, he concluded.

The Future of Social Networks

Finally, we will share important insights from the lecture “Search beyond the search: the biggest opportunity in digital marketing”, in which Neil Patel, Co-founder of NPD (Neil Patel Digital), highlighted that users are more active on social networks than on search sites. “Google searches appear in the 5th position of the list that ranks the use of media on the internet, where videos watched on TikTok are in first place”.

Patel pointed out that marketing is becoming increasingly crowded and expensive, and with so much competition, there are many sites sharing the same information. With that in mind, how can we become relevant among those who really matter to our business? 

The answer lies precisely in the search for information. “From the moment we are born, we seek knowledge. And an important fact is that 15% of all searches on Google have never been searched before. This is important because if you are always chasing what others are doing, it becomes very competitive”.

Neil Patel said he believes search engines transform us. “During the journey of discovery, people change as they learn. The same happens with the algorithms, which adapt according to what the user is looking for. If they see that the second result was considered more valuable, they automatically start changing what will be shown to you and millions of other people. That’s the power of the search engine”.    

Over time, patterns of behavior change, and so do algorithms. Ever wonder if your product users are searching for information via voice, text, on a computer, or with the help of Alexa? For Patel, original content can be the key to standing out among so many repeaters.

Resilience to Drive Businesses and Boost Innovation

According to the speakers who spoke at the event, the coming years will be full of challenges, which is why resilience remains on the list of essential behavioral skills for professionals in the technology sector. However, not everything is in crisis; in 2023 Web Summit will have its first event outside Europe.

The summit will be held in Rio de Janeiro between the 1st and 4th of May and should bring 15,000 people together. In November of the same year, the conference will return to the stage of the Altice Arena, in Lisbon. We are already looking forward to these next editions, and we hope to meet our Anexth partners again, who in this year’s edition were part of the Beta startups team.

If you need help developing transformative digital solutions, contact us using the form below. Maybe next year, your business may also make it to the list of startups at the largest technology conference in Europe.

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